nytimes has an article on that - rove's response to every single candidate he backed losing their race was "without us, the race would not have been as close as it was". hailey barbour had the same line:

Quote:

“I believe that some of that money actually kept Romney from getting beat down by the carpet-bombing he underwent from the Obama forces,” Mr. Barbour said. “I did look at it more as us trying to keep our candidates from getting swamped, like what happened to McCain.”

the idea that obama had to resort to "carpet-bombing" because of all of romney's negative ads apparently didn't occur to him. guess democrats are just supposed to lay down for negative attacks.

also missing: maybe if either of your candidates had some decent ideas, they might have done better?_________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

I guess it's a bit like calling yourself "The democratic republic of..."

As for those figures, it depresses me a little bit to see that the bigger successes are predominantly _opposing_ people. The good news is it looks to be hard to lie about poor candidates, even with lots of money. The bad news is you _can_ bring people down. At a glance, it looks like the figures say smear campaigns are your best bet - if you don't have content on your side.

Another thing to wonder about is where all that money went. It'd be fun to think it was all actors and people who have billboards on their roofs, but I wonder how much ends up in "pundits" pockets, or back with rupert

So much money! I'd have a lot more respect for politicians if they used it to hire some economists, engineers and policy makers to help them improve their plans...

yeah, it would be nice if the PACs had to produce statements like charities do, showing how much of the money they collected actually went to the charity function, vs overhead or profit or what have you. not that the PACs would ever admit they made a profit, but you could tell something by the % of total donations that were actually spent on campaigns.

i suspect ol' karl won't have to move over to the poorhouse any time soon._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter

that's what baffles me. the far right has long existed in an alternate universe where Obama is the Kenyan Muslim Nazi Socialist Overlord who feeds hardworking white Christian taxpayers to his seething naked homosexual hordes, but the Romney campaign had this bizarre divorce from reality. and i really expected better from a guy who billed himself as a successful business leader and managed to govern the bluest of blue states as a pragmatic moderate Republican.

Targeted Victory was singled out by some bloggers because a few of its developers worked for Al Gore in the past.

"Why do they have Al Gore's dev working on Romney's social media development?!" blogger Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick asked. "Truly, how can they expect dedication?" She also singled out another developer who is African-American and "who has a 96 percent chance of being an Obama voter… I will be accused of 'racism' for even flagging. But it's the truth."

Targeted Victory was singled out by some bloggers because a few of its developers worked for Al Gore in the past.

"Why do they have Al Gore's dev working on Romney's social media development?!" blogger Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick asked. "Truly, how can they expect dedication?" She also singled out another developer who is African-American and "who has a 96 percent chance of being an Obama voter… I will be accused of 'racism' for even flagging. But it's the truth."

Yeah, it's true that that's racist!

Well, going by that logic so does Allen West..._________________A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The whack job blogger who made the accusation that a black dev may have sabotaged Orca is also crazying it up in the comments on that last Ars Technica article under the handle "catfitz40." It's some truly dedicated paranoia. She's going on about our Marxist society and how the devs she suspects of sabotage must be outed and held accountable to the nation for screwing up democracy. In her blogger profile she also talks about how:

Quote:

I find that my views on Internet policy, protection of intellectual property, the open source software cults, technocommunism, etc. often spark people to begin Google witch-hunting me to see if they can "get something" on me -- perhaps find that I am a member of the Tea Party or some right-wing faction or blog, or that I work for the government, or worse, some intelligence agency, or I'm flaking for some giant media company or the RIAA or that I'm some 1-percenter who is fabulously wealthy.

Aides to Romney said they were optimistic he would be receptive to a sincere offer from the president to work together

i'm guessing they figure the president will realize he needs to call romney in to save the country. but really, why on earth would the president want to work with him? any idea that is worth anything is already out there for them to pick up. and his vaunted experience as a CEO clearly was over-hyped - really, would any business stake something so important on a system they hadn't bother to train users on, let alone properly test? romney has been out of the business world for quite a while, and new technologies seem to have passed him by.

but you just keep sitting by the phone, mitt. i'm sure barry will realize how badly he needs you any day now._________________aka: neverscared!
a flux of vibrant matter